


The Day That Ryan's Life Stopped

by Greenfrogger



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: 2020 Pandemic, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Beloved Death of Spouse, Character Death, Corona Virus - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenfrogger/pseuds/Greenfrogger
Summary: As you can see by the tags this is based on the current 2020 Pandemic.  Ryan's life completely turns upside down when Pat's falls victim to the illness and this is a small inside look as to what could happen.Since today (8/27) is my birthday, I wrote this in honor of it!
Relationships: Debra McGrath/Colin Mochrie, Patricia Stiles/Ryan Stiles





	The Day That Ryan's Life Stopped

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fan fiction in color. Each color represent a character. Example - Colin is blue as noted at the top of the story. Ryan is red, etc.

** Colin  
Ryan  
MacKenzie  
Deb  
McKenzie's Husband  
Clare  
Sam  
  
I remember clearly the panicked phone call I received from Ryan on that faithful day in March. Ryan had to call 9-1-1 to rush Pat to the hospital. The worse part wasn’t that he couldn’t go with her to the hospital, no, the worse part was that he couldn’t be with her has the virus took hold of her body and killed her. I was shocked by how quickly it all came about. A couple of days prior Pat thought she had a common cold. We all get colds once in a while but instead it was that virus.  
  
Ryan called me the moment the ambulance left.  
  
In tears, “She was a bit congested when we went to bed last night but she woke me up in the middle of the night and said she couldn’t breathe, Colin. She was struggling so hard that I called 9-1-1 to come and rush her to the hospital. I didn’t think she would make it if I drove her. I couldn’t even go with her because of this stupid virus.”  
  
I wished I could have told him I’d be on the next flight to Sea-Tac but the boarder was closed to non-essential traffic. Unless you were delivering goods or medicine, no one was allowed to cross. It sucked. I wanted to be there for him, physically. Except for Pat and their kids, his family all lived in Canada.  
  
He got the call later that morning that the virus had killed Pat. When he told me I became instantly worried about not only Ryan’s physical health but his emotional health as well.  
  
It would be a long few months that we could only talk to one another. Clare and MacKenzie got him a new phone that allowed him to Face Time me so at least he could see me when we talked but that doesn’t help with the need of physical touch.  
  
Once the hold of the virus lessened throughout the world, an agreement on a date was made between our two countries to open the border. I purchased a plane ticket for that day and prayed that the boarder would stay open long enough to get to Ryan in Bellingham. The plan was for Ryan not to know. If something happened and the boarder didn’t open we didn’t know how Ryan would have handled the disappointment.  
  
The day comes to fly out and my plane leaves at 7:03 a.m. Toronto time, landing five hours later in Seattle. I get my luggage, get through customs and text MacKenzie that I’m ready to be picked up. She says that she’s at a fast food restaurant near by and she’ll be at the airport in a few minutes to pick me up. Once we spot each other, she opens the trunk to her car so I can put my luggage in. I put my luggage in her trunk, close it, get in her car and we start the two hour drive back to Bellingham.  
  
“I can’t believe you’re finally here.”  
  
“I can’t believe it either. I’m so sorry about your mom, MacKenzie.”  
  
“Thanks, I guess? Just sounds awful to say thank you for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”  
  
“You’re right about that. I wish it was under better circumstances that I was making this trip. I’ve never been so anxious about seeing your Dad.”  
  
“He misses you, and only you. He feels that you’re the only one that understands him now that Mom’s gone. I get it though, now being married. Someone that loves you for you and not some fake smoke screen. I mean he has us kids, but my Dad is one of a kind and you’ve known him a lot longer and understand a lot of his quirks that I’ll be honest think are crazy thoughts.”  
  
“You mean like not staying in a hotel room above the second floor or having anxiety attacks when he gets on planes?”  
  
“Yep. But that makes my Dad who he is. My Mom got that. So do you. I just hope he can really start to grieve for her and start healing. I get it, he’ll never get over her but he needs to be able to step out of the house and do his own grocery shopping, eventually.  
  
“I’m here to save the day.” I stated. We continued to make small talk for the rest of the trip.  
  
As we got close to my Dad’s home, I said, “More than likely, Dad’s still sleeping. Hopefully getting you in and Clare out without him knowing will be easy.”  
  
“Has he shaven?”  
  
“No, but Clare said he took a shower so that’s progress.”  
  
When we get to the house, MacKenzie texts Clare that we were here and she quietly gets out of the house. When Clare opens the door she tells me that he’s sleeping. I leave my luggage at their doorstep as I help get Clare’s in her sister’s car. Fortunately, MacKenzie doesn’t live too far away if Clare needs to come back to the house to get anything.  
  
I take my stuff into the house and shut the door as the girls start heading to Mac’s house.  
  
The fun then begins to try and get Ryan up and out of bed. MacKenzie has to call him three times before he’s finally answers her call telling him to go downstairs and sit on the couch that there’s a surprise for him. Let’s also note that Ryan hates surprises so I was shocked about how easily his daughter convinced him to go down to the living room.  
I’m waiting in the kitchen, hiding behind a wall waiting for him to get downstairs. I want to make sure he’s sitting on the couch before surprising him. I don’t want to spook the shit out of him while he’s on the stairs where he could potentially hurt himself.  
  
I can hear the phone conversation through Ryan’s phone since he placed it on speaker.  
  
“Are you going downstairs, Dad?  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” he states in that adorable grumpy voice.  
  
“Okay. Dad, when you get to the couch I want you to sit.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Just do what I say.”  
  
Ryan sits on the couch.  
  
“Are you sitting?” MacKenzie asks to make sure.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’m going to hang up now and talk to you later. We love you, Dad.”  
  
That was my clue to come out from the kitchen.  
  
When Ryan saw me all he could do was stop and stare at me. He was totally overwhelmed with various feelings now that I was within his grasp. He tried to speak but no words came out. The only emotion that he was capable of showing was tears falling from his eyes. He was totally stopped in his tracks. I walk over to where he was and together we sit down on the couch, arms wrapped around one another and he starts to sob heavily. It must have been five to ten minutes but it felt like hours. All the grief and stress he has felt since Pat’s illness and death that he has held inside of him came rushing out. It felt so good to hold him and him to hold me. I literally could feel the tension releasing from his body. MacKenzie indicated during the ride to the house that Ryan wasn’t sleeping a lot at night according to Clare. When he did sleep, he was tormented by nightmares of Pat’s death. I wasn’t surprised that he cried himself to sleep and while the couch wasn’t the most comfortable place, there wasn’t much I could do to rouse him. It had been a long day already so since he was already sleeping, I fell asleep as well.  
  
~*~  
  
Ryan and I woke up hours later which once he realized that I was there, in his house, started the tears again. He was relieved to see me. Someone that he could talk to that understood who he was. Yes, he loved his kids but felt it was wrong to burden him with his sadness.  
  
On the ride over MacKenzie told me that all of them knew he was trying to hold his grief in and keep a smile on his face for their kids’ sake.  
  
“Knowing that we were grieving too; he didn’t want to burden us with his sadness, but we all saw it written on his face. I wish we could have helped him work through it, Uncle Colin. I’m just glad you were able to come and help him with his grief.”  
  
It took some time for him to calm down but eventually he did. He felt safe laying his head in my lap and I just lazily petted him as we watched some type of movie marathon on television. Once the marathon was over we then worked on his new hobby of building large Lego sets. It’s something he can easily get lost in without too much thought.  
He didn’t bring up Pat that day. I figured that would be the case. If you want Ryan to talk about something, you can’t pressure him to do it. He gets overwhelmed very easily when pressured and I knew that he and I would eventually talk about Pat but just not at the moment. With Ryan I knew I needed to let him move at his own pace; let him come to terms with talking about Pat and her death. Once he finds the courage within himself, he’ll begin, I will just have to stop whatever I’m doing and listen. The first night though, he just wanted to forget and enjoy the two of us being together. So whatever Ryan wanted to do we did that first night.  
  
The next morning, again sitting on the couch watching a movie, Ryan opened up.  
  
“It’s not fair, Colin. It’s not fair that she had to die alone, probably scared and I couldn’t be there to hold her hand. I would have died along with her if that meant I could have been with her when she died.”  
  
“Ryan, Pat doesn’t want you to live in guilt. She knows you would have been there if it was safe to do so.”  
  
“But I promised to be there in sickness and health.”  
  
“I know Ryan but you couldn’t be there - what would the kids do without you?”  
  
“They’d be fine.”  
  
“Ryan,” I took his hands in mine and squeezed them. “Then listen to me when I say this, I wouldn’t be fine without you.”  
  
“You would….”  
  
“Ryan, no I wouldn’t. I need my best friend to be here for many more years to come. To improvise with him, maybe go on tour with him.”  
  
“No, no, no more tour”  
  
I should have realize that Ryan, who has more fears than anyone I know, wouldn’t be keen on going back on tour anytime soon in fear of catching the virus.  
  
“Okay, but who’s going to be my buddy in crime on the set of Whose Line? I can’t imagine how it feels to lose the woman you love, but please know that I need you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be physically with you the last couple of months since Pat’s death. I so wanted to be here with you, for you.  
  
The tears started to fall again and I just wrapped him up in my arms and let him cry again. I wished I knew what to say to him to make him feel a bit better. He’s hurting because he couldn’t be there when his wife passed away and now he feels that there’s no reason to live. MacKenzie had said to me that they had tried to convince him to talk to his doctor, to have one of those virtual appointments, so that the doctor could prescribe him medication for depression if needed but he refused. Afraid of becoming addicted to the medication was what he said to MacKenzie. Instead, MacKenzie told me that he was drinking bourbon instead to knock himself out in the hopes of not having nightmares about Pat’s death.  
  
I’m hoping with me being here that Ryan can hit his lowest point and start living life again.  
  
~*~  
  
As the days past, Ryan started to open about Pat’s final days, leading to him calling 9-1-1 on Pat’s behalf in hopes that she’d be able to recover. He didn’t get the positive affirmation, although he suspected, that she had COVID until days after her death. He never got tested but the again he hasn’t gone out of the house since this whole mess started. I figured if he did have it, it was long gone by now.  
  
~*~  
  
Eventually I had to return to Toronto. Even as a Canadian, you can only be in America for so long if your intentions were to stay Canadian. So a few days before my flight back I talked to him about my departure but I’d be back as soon as I could.  
  
“I can’t do this on my own. I want you to stay. I need you to stay.”  
  
“I know Ryan, believe me I know and I’ll be back in a few days. I just have to go back to Toronto to wrap some business things up,” as I held him.  
  
I’ll be honest it broke my heart to leave him. He was doing okay with me here, knowing that there was someone else in the house but now I had to leave, even though I had every intention of returning.  
  
Then I had a wonderful idea! Bring Ryan with me to Canada.  
  
Anyone who knew of Ryan, knows that he won’t fly under most circumstances. But if he’s willing to spend a week in a car with me, I was willing to drive from Bellingham to Toronto, through Canada. Since Ryan is both a citizen of Canada and the States he could stay at my house in Toronto for however long he wanted too. Prior to Ryan awakening the next morning I contacted Deb and asked her about it.  
  
“Colin, that’s a wonderful idea. I haven’t seen Ryan in a few years. Maybe a different scenery would help him feel better. Not be constantly reminded of times he had with Pat.”  
  
Awesome, Deb was on board. Now I had to talk to Ryan’s kids and see if they’d be okay. I shouldn’t have doubted.  
  
I had called MacKenzie first and said I would to have a group chat about the idea of Ryan coming with me to Toronto to live for a while. MacKenzie thought it was a great idea but understood the need to get everyone’s opinion. She even said that more than likely she could convince her husband to move into her childhood home to take care of it, since they rented their home.  
  
Here’s the conversation.  
  
“I’ve already told you Colin that I feel it would be the best thing for Dad is to get out of here for a bit and away from the memories. I just hope that Dad would let us live here so we could take care of the property and also to let Clare finish high school without an issue.”  
  
“If Dad wants to go and he’s willing to allow us to move in until he figures out what he wants to do, it’s fine by me. Whatever he needs us to do, to move on, we will do it,” Ryan’s son-in-law said.  
  
“I know how much my Dad is hurting and staying here in Washington, Uncle Colin, is doing more harm than good. Just before you came, he and I went for a car ride and we passed the restaurant that him and Mom went to for the anniversary dinner every year, and he had to pull over and cry because of the memories. What you see on television, the strong, leader type is not what he’s like at home. He’s the most empathic and caring man I have met. I feel that there’s too many reminders that will hinder him being able to get on with his life. By going to Toronto he’ll still grieve but not have the constant reminders like here in Bellingham.  
  
With school, they’re starting remote so as long as I have Internet I’m good. I’m hoping eventually to get back to a classroom and it would be nice to be able to drive from home and not Mac’s house. I doubt the district is worrying about where kids exactly live, so if I ended up at Mac’s house I don’t believe there would be a problem.”  
  
“Uncle Colin, whatever the girls feel is the best than I support them 100%. I haven’t been around Dad as much since I’m an essential worker and I know Dad’s phobias and I didn’t want to compound them. I’ve seen firsthand what COVID can do to a body and it’s not a pretty sight to witness.”  
  
~*~  
  
Once I got the okay from Deb and the kids, I approached Ryan. “I have an idea, Ryan. How would you feel about coming back to Toronto and living with Deb and I for a bit?”  
  
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”  
  
“We can leave as early as tomorrow. It’s going to take us a few days of travel to get to my home but Deb would love to see you. And if there’s another border shut down, well at least you’ll be with me.”  
  
“What about my kids? I mean I can’t abandon them.”  
  
“I’ve already talked to all three of them and Mac’s husband. If you’re okay with it, Mac and hubby will move in here while Clare finishes her final year of high school. That will give you time to figure out what your next steps will be. What ever you need to do, they’re all willing to help you. They just want the best for you.”  
  
“Really? You already talked to them? And they’re okay with it?”  
  
“Ryan, Deb and I and your kids just want the best for you and if that means permanently moving to Toronto with me and Deb than so be it. I’m sure Pat would want you to move on as well. If that means for you to move for a change of scenery I’m sure she will have your back.”  
  
“Well, I guess I’ll get packing.”  
  
Ryan went to pack things he needed to take with him for the next several months to live in Toronto with me.  
  
I’ll be honest, I had mixed emotions about how I wanted this situation to play out. I liked the needy Ryan, getting to hug him and take care of him but I also liked the independent Ryan who could take care of himself.  
  
Which ever way this would end, all Ryan needed to know was that I would be there for him no matter what.**

**Author's Note:**

> I left the ending open purposely. All I wanted to capture was a snap shot of a moment of time in a fictional life of Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie. However the reader wants to end it, they can.


End file.
